The large air tankers on exclusive use contracts have been cut this year from 20 to 13. In 2002 there were 44. This is a 73 percent reduction in the last 16 years.
No scooping air tankers are on exclusive use contracts this year.
The large Type 1 helicopters were cut last year from 34 to 28 and that reduction remains in effect this year.
Some say we need to reduce the cost of fighting wildfires. At first glance the above cuts may seem to accomplish that. But failing to engage in a quick, aggressive initial attack on small fires by using overwhelming force from both the air and the ground, can allow a 10-acre fire to become a megafire, ultimately costing many millions of dollars. CAL FIRE gets this. The federal government does not.
Meanwhile the United States spends trillions of dollars on adventures on the other side of the world while the defense of our homeland against the increasing number of acres burned in wildfires is being virtually ignored by the Administration and Congress. A former military pilot told me this week that just one sortie by a military plane on the other side of the world can cost millions of dollars when the cost of the weapons used is included. The military industrial complex has hundreds of dedicated, aggressive, well-funded lobbyists giving millions to our elected officials. Any pressure on politicians to better defend our country from wildfires on our own soil is very small by comparison.
I am tired of people wringing their hands about the cost of wildfires.
You can’t fight fire on the cheap — firefighting and warfighting are both expensive. What we’re spending in the United States on the defense of our homeland is a very small fraction of what it costs to blow up stuff in countries that many Americans can’t find on a map.
Government officials and politicians who complain about the cost need to stop talking and fix the problem. The primary issue that leads to the whining is that in busy years we rob Peter to pay Paul — taking money from unrelated accounts to pay for emergency fire suppression. This can create chaos in those other functions such as fire prevention and reducing fuels that make fires difficult to control. Congress needs to create the “fire funding fix” that has been talked about for many years — a completely separate account for fires. Appropriately and adequately funding fire suppression and rebuilding the aerial firefighting fleet should be high priorities for the Administration and Congress.
Maybe we need some teenagers to take on this issue!
Earlier we posted Part One of a few notes that I scribbled in a notebook at the Aerial Firefighting conference in Sacramento this week. Here is Part Two.
Neptune Aviation Ron Hooper, CEO of Neptune Aviation, said their air tankers in 2016 averaged 180 hours while working on wildfires. In 2017, a very busy year, that number increased to 276. Their P2V’s have retired from firefighting, leaving the company with nine air tankers, all BAe-146’s.
No one outside the U.S. Forest Service knows when the agency will issue the next round of exclusive use and call when needed next-generation air tanker contracts, affectionately called Next-Gen 3.0. When forced to guess, Mr. Hooper said the aircraft receiving those new contracts may not be activated until 2019. He may know more than most, since his former job was supervising air tanker contracting for the FS.
Phos-Chek One of the major suppliers of fire retardant, Phos-Chek, is changing hands again. In a matter of days its parent company will be Perimeter Solutions. But as in the previous four iterations it will retain the brand name Phos-Chek.
Here is the product’s history of parent companies: 1963-1997: Monsanto 1997-2000: Solutia 2000-2005: Astaris 2005-2018: ICL 2018- ???? : Perimeter
Global Supertanker
L to R: Bob Soelberg and Jim Wheeler of Global Supertanker
Jim Wheeler, CEO of Global Supertanker Services, said the company currently has CWN contracts with CAL FIRE and two counties in Colorado — Douglas (just south of Denver) and El Paso (Colorado Springs). Other pending contracts that they hope to sign later will be with the states of Colorado, Texas, and Oregon.
Colorado
Vincent Welbaum, Colorado’s Aviation Unit Chief
Vincent Welbaum, Colorado’s Aviation Unit Chief, said they are talking to vendors and expect to award a call when needed contract to at least one vendor that can supply large or very large air tankers. The state has been operating their own two Pilatus PC-12 Multi-mission aircraft for several years, using it to detect and map wildfires.
Colorado will have two Single Engine Air Tankers on exclusive use contracts supplied by CO Fire Aviation and Aero Seat as well as four other vendors on call when needed contracts. The state will also have two Bell 205’s on exclusive use contracts.
Helimax
Pat Pilolia, of Helimax
Helimax Aviation is one of two subsidiaries of Heligroup Holdings. The other is CHI at Howell, Michigan which concentrates on heavy lift, while Helimax, at Sacramento McClellan Airport is in involved in aerial firefighting. Helimax recently sold all of their Type 2 helicopters, and now have six Type-1’s, Chinook CH-47D’s.
MAFFS Group Bradford Beck, COO of MAFFS Group said the company recently sold a MAFFS II system to the Tunisia Air Force in Northern Africa. The country has operated two of the original versions of the MAFFS for 10 to 15 years. They will continue to operate the MAFFS I systems on a C-130B and will use a C-130H for the new MAFFS II which will be delivered in the third quarter of this year. The most challenging wildfires in Tunisia occur in the Atlas mountains.
This is the second MAFFS II that the MAFFS Group has sold. The first is now being used in Columbia, South America.
Viking Air
The Viking Air display at the conference.
Viking Air director of Special Projects, Sales, and Marketing Christian Bergeron said the company is currently gathering information from potential customers about what they would like to see on a new version of the CL-415 water scooping air tanker. The company expects to decide by the third quarter of this year if they will proceed with the project, which will be named CL-515. At this stage, Mr. Bergeron said, they expect it to have a larger cargo door, glass cockpit, updated avionics, and will be able to land with a full load of water. Available options will include an infrared camera system and night vision compatibility. Viking’s manufacturing facility is in Calgary, Canada.
Above: the Air Tractor display at the Aerial Firefighting conference.
Here are a few notes that I scribbled in a notebook at the Aerial Firefighting conference in Sacramento this week. This is Part One — I will post Part Two later.
Air Tractor Mike Schoenau, an Air Tractor dealer out of Tulare, CA, said a new single engine air tanker is being flight tested now. The model name is AT-1002 and will hold up to 1,000 gallons. You will be able to purchase one for yourself for about $2.5 Million.
Fire Boss The Bureau of Land Management has not released their list of SEATs on contract this year, many of which will be the amphibious Fire Boss, a variant of the Air Tractor 802. Fire Boss doesn’t know if they will be converting the new AT-1002 1,000-gallon SEAT to use floats.
10 Tanker
RIck Hatton of 10 Tanker Air Carrier.
Their fourth converted DC-10, Tanker 914, will be ready to fight fire this summer. Rick Hatton, the President and CEO of 10 Tanker Air Carrier, said their approval by the Interagency Airtanker Board came to the end of its six-year term, so they retook the grid test in December. Their three DC-10s averaged about 300 hours on fires in 2017, which is more than usual.
I got into a long detailed conversation with Mr. Hatton about how their retardant delivery system can maintain a constant flow, adjusting for the amount of retardant in the tank, drop height, and speed. It usually drops at 150 knots and 200 feet.
Hours per CL-415 As we reported yesterday, Shawna Legarza, the USFS Director of Fire and Aviation, said the two CL-415 scooping air tankers that were on USFS contract in 2017 each had over 400 hours of fire flight time. Due to a reduction in the firefighting budget, the two scoopers had to be cut this year from the exclusive use list. At least a couple are still on a CWN contract, but they may or may not be available if the USFS Calls them When Needed.
Columbia Keith Saylor, Columbia’s Director of Commercial Operations, said the company will have three Type 1 helicopters, CH-47 Chinooks, on exclusive use contract this year. Two have internal tanks and one will use an external bucket.
Conair Shawn Bethel, Conair’s Director, International Business Development, said the external tank on the Q400 can be removed in about three hours by 9 to 12 workers. They recently received a contract to supply six Q400’s to France’s Securite Civile (Department of Civil Defense and Emergency Preparedness).
The Q400 MR can carry up to 10,000 liters (2,600 gallons) of water or retardant. In addition to the nine S-2’s and two Q-400’s, France also has twelve CL-415’s and 40 helicopters.
Barry Lloyd describes the coming transition from Hueys
Wednesday morning at the Aerial Firefighting North America 2018 conference in Sacramento, Barry Lloyd, CAL FIRE’s Helicopter Program manager spoke about some of their operational objectives and the possible transition to Sikorsky Firehawk ships.
California’s legislature has approved funding for replacing the 12 Vietnam War era Hueys with new helicopters. The contract has not yet been signed, but all indications are that the purchase will actually occur.
In Mr. Lloyd’s presentation he described the helicopter program and some of the specifications that led to the selection of the winning vendor.
One of his main points was that CAL FIRE’s goal is to respond to every fire in the state for which they have suppression responsibility, within 20 minutes, and contain 95 percent of all fires before they grow to 10 acres.
(UPDATE: we initially had approval to include about half a dozen slides from Mr. Lloyd’s presentation, but on March 16 higher level personnel in CAL FIRE rescinded that approval and asked that we delete them.)
Model at Sikorsky’s booth at the Aerial Firefighting conference.Barry Lloyd, CAL FIRE Helicopter Program Manager. Photo by Bill Gabbert.
We interviewed Chief Pimlott at the Aerial Firefighting conference in Sacramento, March 13, 2018.
Above: Model of CAL FIRE Firehawk
Ken Pimlott, the Director California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, talks about the 2017 wildfire season, aerial firefighting resources available in 2018, and the acquisition of a new fleet of Blackhawk, (or Firehawk) helicopters. We interviewed Chief Pimlott just after he made a presentation at the Aerial Firefighting North America 2018 conference in Sacramento, March 13, 2018.
The U.S. Forest Service National Director of Fire and Aviation discusses the wildfires in 2017 and the outlook for aerial firefighting in 2018
Above: Shawna Legarza speaks at the Aerial Firefighting North America 2018 conference in Sacramento, March 13, 2018.
(Originally published at 8:18 PDT March 13, 2018)
Shawna Legarza, the U.S. Forest Service National Director of Fire and Aviation, gave a presentation at the Aerial Firefighting North America 2018 conference in Sacramento, March 13, 2018. She said we are no longer experiencing fire seasons — fires now occur year round. Firefighters in Southern California have been saying that for a couple of decades, but the epidemic is spreading.
After her talk we spoke with her for a couple of minutes before she had to leave for a meeting in Arizona. We asked her about the firefighting aircraft that will be available in 2018.
Can crunching the numbers in the annual fire reports provide any insight about how many aircraft are needed?
Above: Tanker 912, a DC-10, drops on the Lolo Peak Fire near Florence, Montana south of Missoula. Photo by John Ames.
(Originally published at 9:39 a.m. MT March 4, 2018)
Every year the National Interagency Fire Center compiles a Wildland Fire Summary and Statistics Report. It usually runs about 70 pages and has piles of data about fire occurrence, weather, and the resources deployed. Since the number of large air tankers on exclusive use contracts has varied from 44 to 9 since 2002, (and 13 this year) an obvious question is, how many do we need? The number of Type 1 helicopters was cut in 2017 from 34 to 28, and that reduction will remain in effect this year.
These numbers do not count aircraft on call when needed (CWN) contracts — aircraft that may or may not be available when the call goes out. Since CWN vendors earn no money unless they are activated, the companies have to charge more to stay afloat. In 2017 the average daily rate for large federal call when needed air tankers was 54 percent higher than aircraft on exclusive use contracts. The hourly rate was 18 percent higher.
I have been discussing the data in the annual reports with one of our frequent contributors, Bean Barrett, who has taken the data analysis to a different level. Some of the key information includes aircraft requests, unable to fill (UTF) rates, and fire occurrence. We both agree that UTF information is imperfect. It is very possible that if an Incident Commander or Dispatcher knows that no air tankers or helicopters are available, they may not waste time sending in a request. Tracking these historical non-requests at this time is impossible.
And, aircraft don’t put out fires. In ideal conditions they can slow it down enough to allow firefighters on the ground to move in and actually put it out — or at least stop the spread on a section of the fire.
With those caveats, check out the work below that Bean has done, crunching the numbers in the annual fire reports. On his graph legends, “T1-2” refers to Types 1 and 2 fixed wing air tankers. If there is an “H”, it is about helicopters. Type 1’s are larger than Type 2’s.
By Bean Barrett
Maybe there is a story in the data after all as far as air tankers go. All derived from NIFC data. Not exactly ops research but perhaps useful for some insight. Like all data, this was probably measured with a micrometer, marked with a felt tip pen, and cut with an axe. So don’t take this one to the bank.
Aircraft requests and fires larger than 40,000 acres
I didn’t draw in the trend line on the fires above but the number of fires >40K acres is clearly increasing [red line]. The number of fires are on the right axis in red and the number of tanker requests by type are on the left axis.
Judging from the number of requests, the response to the increasing trend in large fires has been an increasing number of requests for T1/T2 air tankers [purple line]. Seems obvious.
What isn’t obvious is why the nearly straight line increase in fixed wing requests. Is there some kind of learning curve going on that has resulted in a steady increase in the perceived or actual value of T1-2 fixed wing air tankers? This nearly constant rate of increase in demand needs explaining and nothing in the NIFC data helps.
The requests for helos remained flat. What is curious is that there is little difference between Type 1 Helos and Type 2 helos. You would think that there would be a larger increase in requests for Type 1 helos when there is an increase in the number of big fires.
Aircraft requests and the number of significant fires
This slide looks at the number of requests and the number of NIFC significant fires. Significant fires are defined as >100 acres in timber or >300 acres in grass. The number of significant fires is on the right axis in red and the number of tanker requests by type are on the left axis.
I looked at significant fires because you would think that by the time a fire got to 100 acres / 300 acres someone would be thinking about air tanker IA support. Not much of a trend in the number of significant fires.
If anything, there has been a slight decrease in helo requests over the last three years while there has been a big increase in the number of significant fires. Why doesn’t the demand for helo support follow the number of significant fires? Aren’t helos used for IA? Are the majority of helo requests not related to suppression? Why isn’t the demand for helo support reflected in the number of fires?
Not much correlation between fixed wing requests and the number of significant fires pre 2014. Better in the last 3 years. Maybe fixed wing has been more involved in IA? However, the next slide changed my mind.
Significant fires exceeding 40,000 acres and air tanker UTF rate
Since there was no NIFC data on early suppression success rates when compared to tanker availability, I made an assumption for this and the next slide. I divided the number of fires > 40K acres by the number of significant fires and assumed that percentage roughly represented the significant fires that were not successfully suppressed before they could grow >40K acres. Percentage of significant fires that grew to >40K acres is on the right axis and the UTF % for T1/2 tankers is the left axis.
Up to 2014 it looks like fixed wing T1/2 UTF rates were correlated with the percentage of fires that grew >40K acres. [High UTF rates meant more significant fires grew >40K acres].
However, UTF rates went down for the last 3 years and were unrelated to the number of significant fires that grew >40K acres. Fixed wing availability didn’t correlate well with suppression efforts that kept significant fires from growing >40K acres. Perhaps the majority of fixed wing requests are not for suppressing significant fires.
Significant fires exceeding 40,000 acres and helicopter UTF rate
This slide might be the most important one provided someone can sort out the difference between correlation and causation. The red line is the percentage of significant fires that grew>40K acres [right axis]. The UTF rate for helo types is on the left axis.
Interpretation 1. Helo availability is THE key to more effective early suppression and preventing significant fires from turning into large costly fires. When helo UTF rates were below 20%, significant fires that grew >40K acres were at or below 1.5%. If this is indeed a causal relationship, contract for a much larger helo fleet for IA and the huge wildfire suppression bills will come down considerably.
Interpretation 2. Helos aren’t requested until a significant fire becomes unmanageable and then a large number of requests saturate the system resulting in a high UTF rate. I tend to discount this interpretation because [see # Requests and Significant Fires above] total request numbers don’t go up when the number of fires go up. They don’t. Only the UTF changes. This would indicate an overall helo inventory shortfall.
Either way, there simply aren’t enough helos when they are needed. If the number of helos under contract was closer to a reasonable objective, UTF rates would not have the peaks shown above.
Bradford Beck, COO of 
The Bureau of Land Management has not released their list of SEATs on contract this year, many of which will be the amphibious Fire Boss, a variant of the Air Tractor 802. 
Keith Saylor, 
Shawn Bethel, 
This slide might be the most important one provided someone can sort out the difference between correlation and causation. The red line is the percentage of significant fires that grew>40K acres [right axis]. The UTF rate for helo types is on the left axis.
